The Etymology of the Olympics: Part 1

As we said on Wednesday, we're pretty excited for the Olympics. With that in mind, we thought we'd look at the events in the competition and how their names made their way into the English language.

Archery

The term "archery" came from the Anglo-French archerye and Old French archerie. These words, of course, came from the word for "archer". All the words surrounding archery inevitably have their roots in the Latin for bow, arcus. The root of arc comes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and meant "bowed" or "curved".

Athletics

Linguistically, "athletics" refers to the events in which "athletes" participate. In Greek, athlos was a contest and athlon was a prize. So basically, athletes compete in a contest to win a prize. Sounds about right, doesn't it? The term athletes in Greek was a prizefighter. This made its way into Latin as athleta and into English in the early 15th century.

Badminton

The racket sport of badminton takes its name from where the sport was first played. Badminton House was in Gloucester, United Kingdom. Its name came from the Old English Badimyncgtun.

Basketball

It's a sport using balls and baskets, what more do you want?

Boxing

Boxing takes its name from box, a 14th-century verb that meant "to beat" which later meant "to fight with the fists" and gave us "boxing".

BMX

BMX is short for "Bicycle Motocross". We'll get to "cycling" in a bit.

Canoe (Slalom and Sprint)

The sport is named after the boat used. The word for that boat, canaoua, came from the Arawakan language used in Haiti in the mid-16th century. Many variants made their way into English, but by the 17th century it was established as "canoe".

Cycling

The term "cycling" refers to riding a bicycle, but "cycle" comes from Latin and Greek. In Greek, the work kyklos referred to many circular things and motions. This became cyclus in Late Latin.

Equestrian

Equestrian events involve horses, and the term itself means "relating to horses". However, the term eques in Latin was a horseman or a knight, and equus, of course, means "horse".

Fencing

"Fencing" is technically a shortened form of "defencing", the act of defending oneself. Just like you have to do in this swordsman's sport.

Football

Football obviously comes from putting the words "foot" and "ball" together. However, if you're from one of the countries that calls it "soccer", the term comes from the shortening of "association football".

Golf

After a century out of the Olympics, golf is back. The sport gets its name from Scottish in the mid-15th century; the term gouf came from the Middle Dutch term colf meaning a "stick", "club", or "bat". Nowadays, you can only play golf with a club, though.

Handball

Another obviously named ball sport. "Hand" + "ball" = "Handball".

Hockey

The term for hockey is thought to have come from a Middle French term for a shepherd's staff, the hoquet, since hockey sticks are thought to resemble the staves and crooks used by shepherds.

Judo

The martial art of judo, which originated in Japan, unsurprisingly has a Japanese name. In Japanese, judo means "gentle way", as ju means "gentle" and do means a "way" or "art". What you see is what you get.

As we're halfway through the Olympic events, we'll continue our look at the rest of the games on Monday, when we'll be even more excited as the competition will be in full swing!

How French Gave English Its Sophisticated Words

If you're familiar with the history of the British Isles, you'll be aware that before taking the English language on tour and invading 90% of the world (with varying degrees of success), the British were the whipping boys of Europe and every empire across Europe had a go of taking over Great Britain. This helps explain why the English language is widespread and has a diverse lexicon with roots in many different languages.

What I find most interesting is the relationship between the origin of a word in English and its register. Words from Anglo-Saxon have taken their place in the lower registers of the English language, while "classier" high-register words come from both Latin and French. This all comes down to how the words were being used when they first made their way into the language.

Hastings, the site of the famous battle, in the 19th century.

By the time the Normans invaded in 1066, Anglo-Saxon words were already commonly used. The Normans brought their own language with them, and since they had just taken over the country, they decided that they would be part of the aristocracy instead of falling in line alongside the peasants, serfs, and labourers up and down the country.

Because of this, farmers and the lower classes kept their Anglo-Saxon words whilst the aristocracy and ruling classes consisted of William the Conqueror and his Norman-speaking mates. The Norman language became Anglo-Norman (also known as Anglo-French), which was only spoken by the upper echelons of medieval society while, in a humorous turn of events, the posh people in France at the time were actually speaking Latin.

The most obvious impact of these sociolects is prevalent in food, especially in terms of meat. As a lasting testimony to this, most English words for animals that are eaten come from Anglo-Saxon, while the terms for their meat come from French and Latin roots. For example, if you want some "beef" (from the Norman beof) you'll have to find a "cow" (cū in Old English, which has roots in Anglo-Saxon). "Sheep" is from the Old English scēap, while you eat "mutton", which is from the Old French term moton. Dēor in Old English became "deer" in Modern English, but "venison" came from venesoun in Old French.

This garden in Tokyo would definitely
raise the value of your property.

There are also plenty of non-culinary words that show how lower register words from Anglo-Saxon have higher-register equivalents of Latin and French origin. For example, you could ask your friend to buy ;you a drink (all Anglo-Saxon roots) or you could enquire of your colleague about purchasing a beverage (all French or Latin roots). In the UK, it's usually cheaper to buy a house with a yard (Anglo-Saxon) than one with a garden (French).

While French and Latin words are commonly thought to be of a higher register, there are a few examples of seemingly-sophisticated words that are of Anglo-Saxon origins with the lower-register equivalent being French. Take hue instead of colour and uncouth instead of rude, for example. However, these examples are much fewer than to the contrary.

The Etymology of Our Calendar: Part 2

Following an extensive look at the Latin language last week, we started examining the etymology of the calendar months on Wednesday. Today we're looking at the latter half of the year in the final part of our etymological investigation of the calendar months.

Caesar and Vercingetorix, who was depicted
differently in the popular Asterix comics.

July

You may have noticed while reading Wednesday's post that all of the months of the year originated in the Latin language. July is no exception. What is different about July is that it's the first month in our calendar to not feature the name of a deity. July was originally Iulius mensis in Latin, Julie in Anglo-French and Jule in Old French.

As mentioned on Wednesday, the order of the months hasn't always been the same as it is today. July was originally the fifth month in the old Roman calendar, and was referred to as Quintilis (fifth) before its name was changed to honour Gaius Julius Caesar.

August

As the sixth month in the calendar, August was originally called Sextilis (sixth) before being named after the founder of the Roman Empire, Gaius Octavius, also known as Augustus. The Latin term Augustus mensis made its way into English either directly or by way of the French term Auguste.

September

Despite having plenty of gods, emperors, and leaders, the Romans were clearly sick of honouring people by the time they got around to naming this month. In fact, the two months at the start of the year were the last to be created following a reform of the old Roman calendar by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Despite this reform putting everything out of order, the name of the then seventh month was September, with septem being the Latin for "seven".

The octo in "octopus" also refers to the number eight.

October

If you can count, you'll know that eight follows seven and October follows September. Just like September, October is numeric and came from the Latin October mensis, unsurprisingly meaning the "eighth month", which was directly borrowed into English. If you hadn't guessed, octo in Latin means "eight".

November

November hasn't changed much over 2,000 years. The Latin term November mensis ("ninth month") or the Old French Novembre gave us the term for the eleventh month in our calendar.

December

You get the idea! Seven, eight, nine, leaving us with the "tenth month", December mensis. The word decem obviously means "ten" in Latin, and then Old French took it and made it into Decembre before English permanently borrowed it to be the twelfth and final month of our calendar.

That's all of the months. We'll see you after the weekend when we'll be back with a new country profile!

Part 1 | Part 2

The Language Of Law

If you've ever read a contract, had the horrendous misfortune to deal with bureaucracy, or had a run-in with the law, you'll have come across the wonderful linguistic minefield that is legal language and jargon. Today we'll be looking at legal English as it has been used in the United Kingdom.

Once the Romans conquered England, Latin became the de facto language of the law in the country. Though it was later on that Latin would noticeably change day-to-day English, it did take root in the legal system earlier since it was the Romans who ruled and enforced the law.

The opening page of the Law of Æthelberht

After the Romans left England, the Anglo-Saxons brought their own rules and, as a result, law was discussed, explained, and enforced using Anglo-Saxon or Old English. By the beginning of the 7th century, it was the Law of Æthelberht that established the rules of the Kingdom of Kent. These published rules were indeed written in what is now known as Old English. This was the first example of published law in a Germanic language, and one of the earliest examples of written Old English. With the arrival of the Normans, the language of the legal system in England took a turn. Anglo-Saxon was removed and Anglo-French became the language of legal proceedings. Though records were still kept in Latin, English terms managed to find their way into the lexicon of law. In terms of style, since words of French and Latin origin were considered to be of a higher register than those of Germanic origins, French and Latin words were often preferred in a legal setting over their Germanic counterparts. That said, lawyers would still provide word pairings from both etymological roots in order to make things clearer.